Like all good comics, Leviathan concerns the adventures of a boy, Levi, and his pet - although, in this case, the boy is a faceless baby; the pet is a rather insightful and cynical cat; and the adventures tend towards the metaphysical rather than the physical. While there are occasional references made to Levi's lack of features - meeting a race of people whose heads are noses, Levi's inquiry as to how he smells is answered with "Not very well without a nose" - for the most part it doesn't seem to hinder his ability to experience the world around him. From the trauma of that first separation from his parents - being left at home with the baby sitter for the first time; a trip into hell courtesy of B.L.Z. Bub, Lord of the Fleas; to Levi's valiant attempts to break out of the last panel of the strip to connect directly with his readers, he is able to negotiate most of the obstacles that the world places in his path.

Of course, Levi's also slightly better prepared than most of us, as if nature has gifted him with certain abilities in lieu of those he's lost. First, there's his inquisitive and inventive mind that allows him to devise such things as the atomic formula for the transmutation of base matter into milk or to imagine the mirror opposite of himself and his stuffed bunny. Of course, the anti-bunny might not be to everyone's liking - for according to the strip's guest host for the day, Hegel, the father of dialectical logic, instead of being soft, cuddly, safe, stuffed and inanimate, it would be alive, hard, lethal, and hungry. Sometimes, you don't want to open the door when your imagination comes knocking.

Like so many comics, a lot of the humour and a great deal of the impact in Leviathan is a result of the illustrations. Blegvad is not only able to do wonderful things with a bare minimum of lines, he can also draw beautifully ornate pieces that are eloquently humorous without ever taking themselves too seriously. Even when he introduces a figure like Hegel, or an iconic image from the art world like Edvard Munch's The Scream, it's with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Sometimes, it feels that by introducing these elements in ridiculous circumstances, he is reminding the reader that they are reading a comic and not to take it too seriously.